InSight Landed

Watching this unfold live at the JPL control center (well, “live” as in “8 minute delay,” but as quickly as the scientists and engineers got the data) was amazing.

Not only did this thing land, but we also had two “suitcase-sized” satellites, MarCO A and B, that were relaying data from the lander, which was on the far side of Mars so we couldn’t communicate directly, to us on the ground.

We have a situation that thousands and thousands of things all needed to go exactly right for this to work. Only a single thing going wrong could have doomed the mission.

It’s times like this that I’m proud to be a human. We can do some amazing things.